Sunday, April 1, 2012

Celly for Administrators, Teachers, and Students

Celly is primarily a free group texting service. Group texting saves
time, improves communication, provides documentation of texts, and sets
the stage for easily using many other cell phone tools. The Cells
referred to in Celly are instant mobile networks. With Celly, you can
have open group chat, one-way alerting, or a hybrid where curators can
approve messages.

Celly also provides security and privacy as phone numbers are never
exposed and there are controls. Cell curators filter messages before
they are sent to the group. This keeps discussion on-topic and reduces
abuse, impersonation, and cyberbullying. An @me feature lends itself to
note taking. Celly even has a built-in polling feature complete with the
tabulation of results.

So how might administrators, teachers, and students use Celly to
increase communication and enhance learning? Here are some ideas.

Administrators
Delta Opportunity School needed an emergency notification system, but
was out of money. I (Willyn Webb) suggested a free group texting service
like Celly. It worked so well that we now use Celly for daily staff
communication by sending inspirational quotes, staff meeting notices, or
to gather input prior to meetings, and to poll for feedback after
meetings. Cells also allow increased administrations involvement with
Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). Because it’s not possible for
the administrators to attend each PLC in person, they could still stay
connected. Each PLC is set up as a Cell and the administrators are
members of each.

Teachers
Mrs. Sparks, an English teacher at an alternative high school in Colorado, uses group texting with her classes to gather feedback after class discussions. As homework, she
sends a thought-provoking question from the discussion and has students
respond. Mrs. Sparks reports that the students’ responses are often of a
much higher quality than the ones shared during class. She’s not sure
if it is because they’ve had time to think and process or because they
are getting to text it in, but she knows it works. Every student gets a
chance to answer. A definite improvement over in class discussions. She
has also uses open chats and kept the conversation going outside of
class. All of the texts sent and received can be viewed from her
computer by logging in on the Celly site.

Students
Willyn Webb used a Cell for her teen parent group to send daily writing
prompts for journal entries. When set to open chat, the girls started
using it to support each other as students and parents. Other examples
are, the student council president has a Cell of members to send out
reminders about activities, deadlines, and event announcements. A middle
school student who has a Cell group to drill and review with classmates
before tests.For more information about and ideas on how to use each of these tools, check out Teaching Generation Text.